SmartNotify Simplifies Communication (And Keeps Students Out Of The Cold) with Twilio

Twilio started as “just work” for Gregory Menvielle (pictured right). In 2011, he was an independent developer building communications solutions for clients. Eventually, his freelance hacks grew into Twilio-powered side projects. Those side-projects became business plans and finally, in 2013, he founded his own company – SmartNotify.

SmartNotify helps businesses manage their inbound and outbound communication, to reach their audience effectively and immediately. The app acts as an intelligent middleman between you and your audience. SmartNotify filters out SPAM, schedules SMS, tweets and email blasts, and above all, makes sure your messages are delivered. A small school district in Canada discovered how important that delivery confirmation was last winter.

Keeping Students Safe With Smart Notify

The Red Deer Public School District relied on radio broadcasts to alert parents if weather conditions were too cold, and too dangerous to drop off their kids at the bus stop. If parents missed the broadcast, they were stuck waiting in negative 35 degree weather for a bus that would never come. The school had no way of knowing who heard the alert and who didn’t. As Gregory puts it, the school’s communication strategy relied mostly on hope.

“Hope that people would tune in, hope that people would get the message and be able to act on it, and hope that people on the other side of the line were fluent [English] speakers. It was one-way communication with a prayer,” says Gregory.

The Red Deer Public School District ditched radio broadcasts for SmartNotify and a more direct method of communication: SMS. Now they can contact parents immediately via Twilio SMS, through the SmartNotify app and see exactly who received their message. SmartNotify also lets Red Deer schedule when they want to send messages, and the medium of their choice: SMS, Email, Twitter, etc.

Going Global, Building For Mobile

With the SmartNotify platform in full swing, Gregory focused on building out a mobile app. As a lean startup, he didn’t have the in-house developers needed to build the app from scratch. Using, Jeff Linwood’s AndroidPhoneGap Plugin For Twilio, Gregory built SmartNotify for Android and iOS which is now live.

Now, Gregory and his team are focused on going global, working with customers in France, the US and Canada. You can keep up with SmartNotify’s latest news and updates by visiting their website here.